Many home owners install pools in their backyard, especially home owners located in warmer climates. An inherent danger associated with backyard pools is child drowning. Accordingly, many governments throughout the world have legislated that backyard pools must be fenced. This has prevented a large number of child drownings.
Though pool fencing has reduced the number of child drownings, pool fencing has not eliminated child drownings entirely. This is mainly due to children accessing the pool through a pool gate. Pool gate latches have been developed in order to prevent unwanted access to the pool by children. Pool gates latches typically are located out of reach of children.
A very popular and commercially successful pool gate latch is shown in FIG. 2 of U.S. Pat. No. 5,362,116. The pool gate latch operates using a locking pin which is movable between an extended position in which the locking pin engages a catch and a retracted position in which the locking pin is withdrawn from the catch. A magnet forms part of the catch so that when the locking pin is in alignment with the catch, the magnet pulls the locking pin into the catch and hence to the extended position. The magnet ensures that every time the pool gate is closed the locking pin engages the catch.
The latch is typically placed on the inside of a pool gate so that only a person of sufficient height is able to move the locking pin to a retracted position from outside the pool gate, thus allowing the pool gate to be opened. Unfortunately, children are highly adaptable and understand they need to they need to artificially increase their height to enable them to open the latch. Accordingly, children often climb on to the pool gate so they are able to reach over the pool gate to gain access to the locking pin enabling them to open the latch. This can lead to a child drowning.